KATEPEDIA

If you’re into the royal porn, you’ll be all over the new issue of British Vogue, out Thursday, featuring KATEPEDIA, an analysis of Katy Cambridge’s style...as they repeatedly and almost exclusively call her “Kate” through the article which, I mean it must make her crazy, non? “Catherine” just won’t...stick.

This is a great read. I’ve already gone through it twice this morning, and will have another go at it later in the day, just to revisit some of the best parts. Like the subtle but unmistakeably snarky shots the writer takes at Kate for some of her sartorial preferences that make the fashion elite “(cry) out in pain”. These, obviously, include the fashion editors and creative directors, some of them probably at British Vogue too, who keep hoping that Kate will give up the high street and finally go runway all the time instead of not enough of the time. They too believe it’s a Middleton thing, demonstrated much more by Pippa these days in her sh-tty clothes as Kate appears to be, slowly, letting go of the assy style principles that came with her maiden name:

“Increasingly, the skirts are waftier and skimmier; (Kate’s) all but jettisoned that odd mid-thigh length she and Pippa uniquely loved and which used to make her outfits look as though something had accidentally been missed off.”

Here’s another example of how brilliantly c-nty British fashion bitches can be:

“You can see how much more confident she is, how seamlessly (Kate is) rising to the role after all those years of biding her time. But she is not, repeat not, Diana. If anything, she is the anti-Diana, despite that engagement ring and the eyeliner.”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Amazing, right?

The whole piece is like this! Cheeky and subversive and condescending and God, why can’t all famous people profiles be so refreshingly irreverent? And informative!

According to Roland Mouret, Kate always goes one size UP. She doesn’t like her clothes to be too fitted.

And this:

“Pre-pregnancy, she never failed to accentuate her tiny waist. Although as one (anonymous) designer points out, she favours a slightly raised waist because – they claim – she has a long body and relatively short legs. What? Short legs? Kate Middleton? I looked and looked again. And blow me down, the designer’s absolutely right – her dresses all sit a centimetre or two above her natural waist. I can’t vouch for the long body. That’s how successful the raised-waist tactic is. Memo to self. And isn’t a raised waist useful in throwing the press off the scent in the early stages of pregnancy? If it hadn’t been for the nausea and the alcohol abstinence, she could have spun it out for weeks more.”

Oh and this too:

“Surely you can’t fake that grin, which frequently transports her expression from tight-lipped and somewhat stern to infectiously relaxed. Someone told me she had her teeth veneered a year before the wedding – good call. She is terrifically smile-ogenic. And when he’s with her, so is Prince William. I hope she got to expense the veneers, because as far as GB inc’s concerned, that’s a billion-dollar smile.”

British Vogue just pointed out that the future Queen is long-waisted (me too!) and has capped teeth, all in the guise of a good “style tip”. PLEASE. Who’s better than the English at serving a sly cut with their tea?

Still, beyond taking a few shots at Kate and her wedges and devotion to bad footwear, there is another point to the piece: it is never accidental with Kate, and it’s a mistake to underestimate her as a simple girl with great hair who’s just there to have babies. Because from the veneers to the waist, from the sizing to the eyeliner, she’s in full control, hyper-aware of how she’s scrutinised and, more and more, using that scrutiny to communicate.

As astutely noted by the writer, protocol would dictate that Kate is mostly mute. Think of how Diana would communicate with her downcast eyes and her pouting. Think of how she chose her dresses to send her messages. Kate’s doing it too -- only she’s not rebelling against the system. There’s a reason she and William kept their lanyards on during the Olympics when no one, really, would require them to present their credentials and it’s also why, as you know, she insists on high street shopping, so as to never increase the perceived distance between where she is now and where she came from, even though most of us never stop to think of what she does, exactly, with those Topshop/Zara/Reiss clothes; I didn’t really consider it until now either.

Spend $200 on a dress so that people won’t think you’re extravagant, but get $500 worth of royal tailoring, or more, to make it fit like it’s bespoke. Of course she does. That’s a luxury few of us have access to. Besides, you don’t need to put that much effort if you just spent the $700 to begin with on a higher end dress. But this is the kind of calculation that got her where she is.